Chapter 6: The Future Is Now: New Opportunities for Collaboration, Promotion,
Distribution and More
Is the album dead? More aptly put, “Are the vinyl album and CD dead?” Full albums
don’t seem to fit in well with the current direction of the music industry. Sure, the labels
would love to keep them going, but the masses seem to be more interested in download-
ing a single tune while forgetting the other tracks. This is a tough pill to swallow for
many artists who put in long, laborious hours honing songs that fit together like a well-
made glove.
Consider the concept album. You know ... albums such as Sgt. Pepper; The Wall;
Queen’s Songs for the Deaf; Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys; Jethro Tull’s Thick As A
Brick; The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, a Bowie classic.
And who could forget Tommy by The Who, which is technically a rock opera. The list
goes on and on. These were albums that depended upon each song to build on the next.
They told a story.
Some definitions and a brief history lesson are in order again. A concept album is an
album that is held together by a unified theme. It might be musical, lyrical or otherwise.
The thing is, it’s tied together and creates a message for the listener. A non-concept, or
typical album, is a collection of unrelated songs, even though they may be great, individ-
ually. The first accepted concept album was Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads (re-
leased in 1940). Songs of Our Soil and Ride This Train, (released in 1959 and 1969, re-
spectively) by Johnny Cash were also considered concept albums. Jazz musicians were